Introducing our Daily Poll Watch

Election Day is four weeks from tomorrow, which means that polls on the presidential race (and, to a lesser degree, on U.S. House and Senate races) increasingly will be closely watched by political junkies of all stripes.

Accordingly, we are introducing here a Daily Poll Watch, wherein we will pass along the results of surveys that catch our eye — even if the numbers don’t always satisfy our liberal partisanship. But relatively little attention will be paid to polls known for dubious methodology. Rasmussen polls, for example, will get scant mention, mainly because they are conducted by means of robo-calls and don’t include cell phones, which means they miss a significant number of potential voters.

Our first entry comes from Gallup, where a three-day rolling average shows President Obama’s job-approval rating up three points at 51 percent, while a seven-day rolling average puts the president five points ahead of Mitt Romney in the presidential race.

And then in THIS PIECE, Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium compares the boost Romney got from his debate performance last week with the one he got from naming Paul Ryan as his running mate:

[T]he post-debate bounce is looking a lot like the post-Ryan-VP bounce. It is about 3.0% in size, closing half the gap between Romney and Obama. As debate-induced changes go, this is exceptionally large. However, it is showing signs that it has peaked…It is starting to level off now…

Two bits of evidence suggest that Romney’s post-debate gains have come from inspiring partisan voters, as opposed to flipping nonpartisans. First, according to a recent PPP poll in Wisconsin, gains have come in the form of an increased enthusiasm among Republican voters – but not among independents. Second, the Rand survey, which tracks individual sentiment, does not show a massive wave of one-way mind-changing, which is what occurred [to Obama’s benefit] after the Democratic convention.

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“Romney has drawn even with Obama in the presidential race among registered voters (46% to 46%) after trailing by nine points (42% to 51%) in September. Among likely voters, Romney holds a slight 49% to 45% edge over Obama. He trailed by eight points among likely voters last month.”

The former head of a Special Forces “Site Security Team” in Libya tells CBS News that in spite of multiple pleas from himself and other U.S. security officials on the ground for “more, not less” security personnel, the State Department removed as many as 34 people from the country in the six months before the terrorist attack in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.

Lt. Col. Andy Wood will appear this week at a House Oversight Committee hearing that will examine security decisions leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi.

Speaking to CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, Wood said when he found out that his own 16-member team and a six-member State Department elite force were being pulled from Tripoli in August – about a month before the assault in Benghazi – he felt, “like we were being asked to play the piano with two fingers. There was concern amongst the entire embassy staff.”

He said other staffers approached him with their concerns when the reduction in security personnel was announced.

“They asked if we were safe,” he told Attkisson. “They asked… what was going to happen, and I could only answer that what we were being told is that they’re working on it – they’ll get us more (security personnel), but I never saw that.”

Wood insists that senior staff in Libya, including Ambassador Stevens, State Department Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom, and himself, all wanted and had requested enhanced security.

“We felt we needed more, not less,” he tells Attkisson.

Asked what response their repeated pleas got from the State Department in Washington, Wood says they were simply told “to do with less. For what reasons, I don’t know.”

“We tried to illustrate… to show them how dangerous and how volatile and just unpredictable that whole environment was over there. So to decrease security in the face of that really is… it’s just unbelievable,” Wood tells CBS News.

What exactly was Obama’s service in the military? I must have missed it, because I am sure he would be trumpeting it if he had any at all.

Oh that’s right, he led the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Sitting in the situation room in a bunker is very brave.

Besides, you need to get over your habit of deferring to Bush each and every time Obama has a problem. The Obama administration not only failed to protect our embassy in Libya, they lied about it to try and save political face.

A chickenhawk is one who supports a certain war but declines to participate in it despite otherwise being eligible by virtue of age, physical condition, etc.

Hence, Obama was NEVER a chickenhawk. Bush was. He fully supported the Vietnam War, but when he signed up for the Texas Air National Guard in 1968, one of the questions he had to answer on his application forms was whether he wanted to go overseas. He checked the box that said: “DO NOT VOLUNTEER.” What a weenie!

Meanwhile, you go right on with your silly disparagement of Obama’s role in the Bin Laden mission. It’s so wingnutty of you.

In your world of illogical hysteria I am now disqualified from any comment about any military action right?

People have all sorts of reasons for not serving, just ask Joe Biden.

One of the reasons I did not even consider the military as an option is my upbringing in Madison and my further indoctrination at the University of Wisconsin. Our classmates in ROTC were disparaged as freaks and war mongers who were out for blood and gun crazy rather than selfless heroes and ultimate citizens.

What a shame. I know that service in the military would have made me a better person but that door closed along time ago.

doc: I had forgotten your previous mention of not having served in the military. I didn’t serve either. I got a draft notice 48 years ago last winter, but I was rejected because of asthma. Vietnam was not yet a big issue then, and I was prepared to do a two-year hitch in the Army (although not enthusiastically, I’ll admit). Anyway, it wasn’t to be, and I subsequently became involved in the protest movement against the Vietnam War (which, by the way, took me to Madison on several occasions).

As for my failure to mention the Libya matter, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll write a full-fledged treatise on the subject as soon as you address Romney’s countless lies on various issues.

Frankly, I haven’t written about Libya because I haven’t followed the controversy. It’s not going to be an issue in the election, and I’ve got other fish to fry.

Piss poor statement Pat, “Frankly, I haven’t written about Libya because I haven’t followed the controversy. It’s not going to be an issue in the election, and I’ve got other fish to fry.”
Then Obama shouldn’t have made Iraq or Afgan an issue either, you are such a bushwah hypocrite.

doc said: “The Obama administration will have to shoulder the blame for this blunder and accept responsibility for the loss of life.”

I suppose you think this was the first time one of our embassies came under attack? Tell us, oh great doctor, what Reagan did about the embassy bombings in Beirut. Did he protect them beforehand? Did he do anything about it after? Did he accept responsibility?

How about the bombing of the Beirut Barracks that killed 219 Marines. Did he protect them before, and what did he do after?
The answer to all of that is “NOTHING.”

Did GWB accept responsibility for not going after al Qaeda, when he found out they blew up the USS Cole? He said he didn’t want to swat flies. Well the fly turned out to be Bin Laden.

And as far as serving, you may get your chance if Romney is elected. Judging by his foreign policy speech, he wants to ramp up military spending and take on all countries. I say if he wants to start more wars, that he volunteer his own sons first. Then all the Republicans who vote for him get to go next. All Republican doctors go next. You Republicans talk a big line, but then let others fight what you start. If you want war, go fight them yourself. You can pay for them also.

Romney wants to preserve military spending because we continue to need a strong military. Do you think that Iran, North Korea, Russia and China will just close up shop and meet us around the campfire to sing Kumbaya?

They haven’t even refrained from aggression with a Nobel Peace Prize winner in office why would they refrain when Romney becomes President?

Of course they aren’t, Dopey. But their failed policies of trickle down economics, and no way to pay for increased military spending are on the menu. Romney doesn’t want to just preserve military spending he wants to increase it. Astronomically!! How much do you suppose eleven new ships a year will cost?

Yes, by all means, let’s do away with the ACA and build more weapons. Republican idiocy!

As Commander-in-Chief, Mitt Romney will keep faith with the men and women who defend us just as he will ensure that our military capabilities are matched to the interests we need to protect. He will put our Navy on the path to increase its shipbuilding rate from nine per year to approximately fifteen per year, which will include three submarines per year. He will also modernize and replace the aging inventories of the Air Force, Army, and Marines, and selectively strengthen our force structure. And he will fully commit to a robust, multi-layered national ballistic-missile defense system to deter and defend against nuclear attacks on our homeland and our allies.

This will not be a cost-free process. We cannot rebuild our military strength without paying for it. Mitt Romney will begin by reversing Obama-era defense cuts and return to the budget baseline established by Secretary Robert Gates in 2010, with the goal of setting core defense spending—meaning funds devoted to the fundamental military components of personnel, operations and maintenance, procurement, and research and development—at a floor of 4 percent of GDP.

Several Obama Administration officials—including Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, and former National Security Adviser General James Jones—have argued that the American people should, as a goal, seek to devote 4 percent of our GDP to national defense. Mitt Romney agrees with that pragmatic aspiration. He will reverse the three massive rounds of defense cuts signed into law by President Obama so the United States can restore and rebuild the finest Armed Forces the world has ever known.

Mitt Romney will also find efficiencies throughout the Department of Defense budget that can be reinvested into the force. The Department’s bureaucracy is bloated to the point of dysfunction and is ripe for being pared. In the years since 2000, the Pentagon’s civilian staff grew by 20 percent while our active duty fighting force grew by only 3.4 percent. That imbalance needs to be rectified. During World War II the United States built 1,000 ships per year with 1,000 people employed in the Bureau of Ships, as the purchasing department of the Department of the Navy was then called. By the 1980s, we were building seventeen ships per year, with 4,000 people in purchasing. Today, when we are building only nine ships a year, the Pentagon manages the shipbuilding process with some 25,000 people. That kind of excess must be brought to an end along with the byzantine rules and wasteful practices that riddle the military procurement process.